


Shitty Memories and a Shitty Guardian

by nork



Series: Moments [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Meteorstuck, but oh well, child abuse (referenced), i really wanted to write some crappy angst, i think it's really disjointed, idk man, my first hs fic!!, pre-retcon, so i did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6696652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nork/pseuds/nork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider can't sleep sometimes, and he just wants to go somewhere quiet to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shitty Memories and a Shitty Guardian

Something in your room moved. You sit up, the back of your neck prickling with sweat, your shitty katana materialising in your hands. You whip off the covers, and stand in your dark room, aiming the sword at the darkest corners, knowing what they could conceal.

Of course. You're not in Texas. Your mind clears a little, and the cold seeps into you. You were just on the meteor. Just like the past year. Arms shaking, you lower your sword, breathing shuddering.

‘It’s okay, he’s dead, he’s dead he’s dead it’s not my fault not myfault he’s dead,’ you murmur, words tumbling out. You sink to your knees. You've woken up like this too many times to count. The piece of legendary shit you were holding finally slipped out of your fingers after your body had produced enough sweat to fill one of Karkat’s forbidden buckets.

Speaking of Karkat, you wondered idly if he was okay. Troll lusii always fought their charges, right? Maybe he’d be able to help you- after all, they all had called _him_ your lusus. Surely there’d be something about his behaviour that they recognised somewhat, right?

He was halfway across the meteor, you think. The trolls slept away from the humans, because _damn_ did that slime stink. You have no idea how that clown had eaten it for years.

Anyway, there was no fucking way you were getting back to sleep. After the first few wakeup strifes with him, you were able to just leap out of bed and fight. _Always gotta be prepared in the Strider household_ , you thought, sticking the sword back in your strife deck. It was just habit, you told yourself, but you didn’t retrieve it. Sighing, you walked to the door, and pushed it open, heading out of your room, to the rest of the meteor.

You found yourself in your regular thinking place- an old, unused lab covered with a film of dust. Despite this, there was a whole wall devoted to just a window. There was a line of footprints to an undusted circle- you walked the exact same path and sat in the exact same spot, staring out into a completely different corner of paradox space. There were never any constellations, not that you’d even be able to recognise any anyway. Your apartment was in the middle of a city- there were very few stars in the sky you had been used to.

Earth didn’t even exist anymore, so there wasn’t a point to continuing down that thought train. Instead, you left it idling at the station, ready to get covered with dust just like the rest of the meteor. You focus on the silence. It's deafening. You’d found pretty early on that there were few places on the meteor that was completely silent, and this was one of them. In other blocks, there was always a creaking or groaning, and if you were unlucky you could hear the clown honking in the distance.

Now ,em>that was a whole new level of disturbing.

You decided the best way to distract yourself was to delve into some of the less painful memories- more recent ones.

There had been one night, about a month ago, when Karkat came into your room, looking for you. You had just been making some shitty comic that you knew nobody else would see, but who else would continue the wonder of SB&HJ if you didn’t? And the troll had just walked in, and you could see the telltale shake of his shoulders that he was going to start crying, real soon. Just because you had a mask didn’t mean you couldn’t see through others, and Karkat’s mask was practically transparent. As much yelling as he did, anger wasn’t the only emotion on his sleeve.

You’d immediately shuffled up on your bed, giving him space to plop himself down beside you. It was large enough- Rose had alchemized you both double beds. Bigger than any bed you’d ever slept in before. You shut down this train of thought again and went back to the memory.

After spending enough time with Karkat, you knew enough about the troll romantic quadrants and how much they meant to them; how much it could break one of them if the quadrant broke. After all, they were for life, or you’d mistaken someone for a quadrant. Which, from what you’d gathered, was really fucking heartbreaking.

You hadn’t even needed to say anything, just nodded at him and put aside your laptop. The dam broke and Karkat's feelings just spilt out like a goddamn flood. There were no flood barriers that could hold him back once he got going, anyway.

‘Gamzee’s been distancing himself from me and I don’t know what to do, I have no idea and I’m so fucking confused because this is the first time I’ve been in a conciliatory quadrant with someone and I don’t have any idea of how to do this shit and look at me, asking help from a fucking human,’ he rambled on and on, and you just sat there. Listening.

Not much else to do, really, and you were slightly surprised that he wasn’t actually yelling. Just ranting at a regular volume. ‘-he fucking cut off the moirallegiance, telling me he didn’t motherfucking need me and then he fucking honked at me! He gave me a shitty grin and walked off and I didn’t know what to do- what the fuck am I doing, you probably don’t understand shit all of what I’m saying, do you? You were the only person I could come to because everyone else’s busy or fucking dead because of me and I can’t do this, Dave. I just don't know how much I've got left in me.’

‘Woah, woah, if you don't slow down right now there'll be a speeding ticket waiting for you.' His face doesn't change, so you decided to change tact. 'Alright, the clown friend-dumped you, I got that, but none of this is your fault. You killed nobody yourself, so it’s not your fault,’ you remembered yourself saying, and you muttered it aloud. The same word as earlier- ‘fault’.

* * *

‘If this isn’t any of our faults, then who?’ Your mind flickers to Noir. You resurface from the memory completely, still staring out into paradox space. Still another two years until this meteor has reached the end of this shitty trip. The silence deafens you.

It helps with everything, just sitting here. Makes you feel small. Everything’s quiet and you have time to think everything over and over until it’s a jumble and you’re finally tired enough to head back to your bed and sleep. It’s like this a lot.

Wake up, have a freakout, come to the lab and think, get tired, go back to sleep. Most nights more or less follows this format. Sometimes you don’t even wake up, and sleep through the entire night. They’re becoming more and more frequent. You think it might be a sign you’re getting better, a sign you’re finally moving on.

‘Wouldn’t that be fucking great,’ you murmur, your breath condensing on the window. You moved back a little, and planted your hands in the dust, leaning back. You decided you didn’t care if you messed up the pristine-ness of this room, and just sat back, and tried to forget everything from before the game.

Of course, try as you might, you continue to be just Dave, with the shitty memories staying and a shitty guardian who’s supposed to be dead but isn’t because he’s right beside you in your head, looming. Ready to deal a blow from that shitty, shitty sword, like a person raising a kid absolutely shouldn’t do. At first, you always thought you’d never have kids because you’d never be able to raise them to be as cool as you.

Now, you figure you’ll never have kids because you don’t know how you won't be like him.

You sighed, rubbing your eyes beneath your sunglasses, lifting them from your nose. On a whim, you pull them off completely and just stare into the lenses, your face reflected back. You give a half-smile, your face looking naked without the aviators. Everything was lighter, and you were slightly disoriented; that’s what having sunglasses on 24/7 would do to you, you supposed.

You slip them back on, and stand up, brushing your hands together to dislodge the dust. You look up, give a quick glance around, out of years of habit. Of course, there was no Bro to leap from the shadows, and you know this, but it doesn’t stop the hair from raising on the back of your neck in readiness (or fear- you had never been sure which. You think you know now). You retrieve your sword out of your sylladex, nonetheless.

They could say a lot about you, but unprepared for a strife was not one. You hold the sword loosely in your hand the whole way back to your room, and you collapse on the bed, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling.

It's not silent here, not like the lab, but it's still quiet. Thinking was not a good thing for you anytime, much less when you are paranoid, so you lay down your sword beside you, and pull over your laptop. Watching one of the shitty romance movies that Karkat had recommended sounded like a pretty good way to send you to sleep.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work, but you do have something else to tease him with in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first hs fic, I'm sorry if it's really crappy! I don't really know what happened here? I just wanted to write some angst because I still need to improve that too.  
> Plus I'm very inexperienced with writing with 'you' so the tense switches a few times.


End file.
